This 32-pages analysis deals with the private sector’s engagement in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The core question is: What is the actual impact of businesses’ SDG activities on global sustainability?

The analysis includes a case study on the tobacco industry, written by our policy advisor Laura Graen. She describes how the multinational tobacco corporations Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International and Imperial Brands are handling the debates on sustainability and their reaction to SDG 3.a which requires the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The chapter contains a clear recommendation for tobacco companies as well as recommendations for other business sectors.

Another case study discusses the impact of the finance sector. Can green bonds and SDG bonds fund sustainable development? The author, Wolfgang Obenland of Global Policy Forum, recommends: “while investments into sustainable sectors, activities and possibly fiscal incentives in order to promote sustainability in general or the SDGs in particular may seem to be steps into the right direction, they must not serve as distractions from the fact that investments in unsustainable production patterns need to be dis-incentivized at the same time.”

"The biggest impact the tobacco industry can have on the achievement of the SDGs is the immediate cessation of all marketing efforts for cigarettes and other harmful tobacco products, and subsequently the stop of manufacture and sale of these products."

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Governments have the duty, as well as the right, to protect their citizens from the tobacco industry because the continued production and marketing of tobacco products violates rights from seedbed to butts, including child labor, workers' rights and the human rights to health and life.